


But I Die, Without You

by plinys



Series: five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:06:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He called himself a poet, a shaper of worlds, and a romantic. Sometimes that made you forget that he was just as sick as you, because how could the world hurt someone so innocent and beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But I Die, Without You

**Author's Note:**

> So watching RENT the other day totally inspired me to create this AU. I will hopefully be posting a series of different interconnected drabbles and one-shots, based of les amis being in a RENT like situation with AIDS ever prevalent and all that other alphabet city goodness. Enjoy. Also sorry for the shortness.

You used to feel alone.

You’d laugh and smile with your friends, but something was always missing. A piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit, maybe it was the reminder of what it was that drew you all together in the first place. Sometimes you wondered if you all would have been friends had the situation been different. You wondered how your life might have changed without the sickness that gripped your body and made the world that much darker. 

Then you met him, a burst of light in an otherwise dark world. With ribbons in his hair and a smile on his face, he made you think that the world could get so much better. When you were with him your smiles were so real. There was a fire that burned within him and when he took your hand it warmed you up as well. 

He called himself a poet, a shaper of worlds, and a romantic. Sometimes that made you forget that he was just as sick as you, because how could the world hurt someone so innocent and beautiful. 

You told him that once and he just laughed, telling you that he wasn’t as innocent as he seemed, and then proving it to you in ways that you had only dreamed of. 

He used to write on everything, his hands were always itching for a pen in a moment of inspiration. There were words scribbled on across countless notebooks. The walls were marked with paint and pen as well, but what you loved most of all was when he would write on you. As if you were his own personal canvas, a masterpiece.

They were poems, little bits of thought, of fancy and romance. It was one of the things that made him so wonderful, the way he would bite his lip in concentration as he dragged the pen over your arm or the way he read them back to you as if you could not see the word for yourself. 

They were stories of the two of you, in not so many words. 

They were his and he was yours. 

Then came the day that he couldn’t hold a pen steady anymore. You watched him as he stood there with his hand shaking too badly for the words to be even considered legible. You watched him break down before your eyes. 

You had offered to write them down for him, that way he wouldn’t forget. He let you, because he always believed one day those words were going to change the world. He believed that he could be great and that you would be the right beside him. Even as you joked about taking him away from this place, to a place where the stars weren’t hidden by the street lights, he had always believed that things would get better. As long as you were together, things would get better.

Until they weren’t and neither of you could kid yourselves anymore. 

The soft words and softer smiles were replaced by shivers and fevers and fear, a fear that raced down your spine, because you knew that there was a chance that you would lose him.

He stopped writing words, stopped asking you to write them for him, he stopped believing in their power. The only poems you heard were the ones that he muttered in his sleep as you held him tight and wished that his nightmares would go away. 

Sometimes you would see him, sitting there with a pen in hand, as if he was trying to find the right words to say, something, anything at all. In the end though he would always give up, letting the pen clatter to the floor. 

Then came the breakdown, and you would be there to catch him when he fell. You would always be there to catch him when he fell. 

Until he couldn’t fall anymore…

You had always hated hospitals, but never as much as you had those days. You hated how they wouldn’t let you stay by his side, because you weren’t family. You were the closest thing he had, it was your name on the edge of his lips whenever he woke up scared and alone.

His family never came for him anyways, they didn’t even care. 

Your friends came though, hands clasped onto your shoulder, and smiles for the boy that was fading fast. 

No matter how many times Combeferre tried to tell you that things were going to get better and no matter how many times Eponine helped braid ribbons into his hair, you still saw the worry in their faces. It was the way Joly wouldn’t answer any of your questions or the way that Enjolras stood stiffly and lingered in the doorway. 

Then there were other times, where they all just looked away, forced smiles that didn’t fool anybody. 

But then he would smile, just a small one, and for a moment everything would be alright. For a moment you could forget, but that moment was never long enough. 

He would hold your hand and tell you that he was feeling better every day, and you knew he was lying, but you could hope.

After all, hope was all that you had left. 

That was until he closed his eyes that last time and the beating of his heart stopped, and you were left all alone again. 

And you thought that nothing was ever going to be alright again, but then you looked around you, and noticed the smiles that weren’t there a year ago, and you realized, that even though he was gone, his light still shone around you. He had changed you for the better, and maybe in the end that was mattered.


End file.
